Norway plans to launch the world’s first autonomous, fully electric ship next year

The world’s first fully autonomous, fully electric commercial cargo ship will be hitting Norway’s coastal waters as early as next year.

Once you start working on autonomous cars, there’s only a step (more likely a swim) to go to autonomous ships. In broad lines the tech is similar, the role is similar, it’s just that the surface they travel on is only a tad similar.

So it may not come as a huge surprise that people are working on designing ships that can navigate themselves — but just how close we are to a fully working such vessel likely will. Norway is expecting its first fully autonomous, fully electric commercial cargo ship to hit the waters next year.

Building and development costs on the to-be-christened Yara Birkeland is estimated to cost some US$25 million overall.

Mike Rawson

Mike Rawson has recently re-awoken a long-standing interest in robots and our automated future.
He lives in London with a single android - a temperamental vacuum cleaner - but is looking forward to getting more cyborgs soon.